


The Beauty of a Time Machine

by ChronicBookworm



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22403977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicBookworm/pseuds/ChronicBookworm
Summary: While dealing with a Runner in a crowded market, Laura’s team also meet a pair of intriguing time travelers and end up going on an adventure beyond what they bargained for. All the while Laura deals with her growing feelings for one of them, and has to make a decision about her future.
Relationships: Laura Cadman/Clara Oswald
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: X-Ship - The Crossover Relationship Exchange 2019





	The Beauty of a Time Machine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).



They’d done some reshuffling of the gate teams after the newest batch of recruits on the Daedalus, and Laura had been put on Lorne’s team – a distinct step up. Someone at the top of Command must like her – she kind of wanted it to be Rodney, but it was probably Sheppard. Still. The others on the team were new, though, and they were still doing milk runs for the moment. Laura had thought being on the second most important gate team would be a bit more exciting that this. 

They were at one of those spontaneous marketplaces that occasionally popped up in the Pegasus galaxy; all stalls were the removable type, which was the usual case in Pegasus, where you never knew when you’d have to flee for your life, and the location of it was spread by word of mouth rather than anything official. Still, it was a pretty good day to be out and about, looking at wares with her gate team. They’d only been together a few weeks, Major Lorne as lead, her, and the two New Guys dropped off by the Daedalus last time it came. The New Guys were quickly getting a crash course on the Pegasus Galaxy: Where Weird Shit is Normal and Most Things Actually are Out to Get You.

Laura had her eye drawn in particular to two young women who didn’t look like they belonged to any particular group. Nor did they look like refugees from a culling. There was just something about them – they walked with confidence, curiosity, not like they’d been living under the shadow of the Wraith their entire lives. They walked like the Atlanteans did, even if they weren’t armed. There was even something Earth-like about their dress, one in a leather jacket, the other in a dress that came to mid-thigh, leggings, and boots. She supposed practical clothing was surprisingly universal, even in another galaxy.

There was the sound of the Stargate activating, and another young woman came through – this one out of breath, with ragged clothing. She had the feral look about her that Ronon had had, when he first joined the expedition, and she and Lorne exchanged speaking looks. A Runner. They weren’t the only ones to recognise it. The activity in the market kicked up a notch, but it wasn’t the same hawking of wares and sales as it had been just a few moments ago. There was a sense of desperation to the activity as all the stallkeepers closed up shop as quickly as they could and began dialling out, parents trying to gather up all their children, and people frantically looking for their friends and family. The New Guys looked slightly puzzled, but they were tense, correctly reading the energy of the situation.

The Runner approached a few stalls, begging for something – food, water, medicine, there were lots of things she could need, but nobody wanted to trade with her. Not that she had anything to trade. Laura supposed she must hope for a charitable soul to take pity on her; there were such people around in the galaxy, Laura knew, even if at times they felt hopelessly rare.

She saw one of the women, the pretty one in the dress, talk to the Runner a bit, and then give her something. That was another similarity between the Atlanteans and the two young women Laura had spotted earlier: they both moved towards what other people moved away from.

Lorne and the rest of the team approached as well. As they got closer, it seemed like the Runner was explaining her situation to the other two women. Huh. Laura thought most people in Pegasus knew about the Wraith, at least the people who didn’t have a ZPM protecting them, or anything like that. The people who would attend an impromptu market on an uninhabited world, definitely. That reinforced her initial impression that there was something weird about these two.

The two women introduced themselves as Clara and Me, and the Runner as Nothemi, and Lorne introduced his team.

“Your name is Me?” one of the New Guys asked – the one called Bryant. “That’ll get confusing.”

Me looked a little bit annoyed.

“If you really don’t think you can manage, I was once known as Ashildr. But I prefer Me.”

Laura made a mental note to always call her Me, no matter how confusing it might get – she wasn’t the kind of dick who went around calling people something they didn’t want to be called (Laura called the New Guys by their names to their faces, she just liked to think of them as the New Guys until they’d proven they could hack it in Pegasus. No offense meant).

“I use Lady Me, when there’s a risk of ambiguity,” Clara said. “It seems to work all right.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Lorne said. “Now we need to work out how we get ourselves out of this alive.”

They’d walked through the gate, so there was no puddlejumper for them to take. They were trapped on the planet with a Runner and the Wraith on the way until they could safely evacuate through the Stargate that was milling with panicking civilians. Nobody suggested that they leave her and the rest of the marketgoers and save themselves. It was an unspoken agreement that they’d be the last ones off, and if they could take Nothemi with them, they would. Atlantis had a procedure for dealing with Runners, which involved setting up an operating theatre in a remote spot on an uninhabited world, and then, once the operation was done, taking least three trips through the Stargate before settling on a final destination, so the Wraith would lose the trail. However, with the Stargate occupied by fleeing marketgoers and sellers, that seemed difficult to set up.

“I didn’t know about the market,” Nothemi said. “I wouldn’t have come if I did.”

“How long do we have before the Wraith show up?” Lorne asked.

Nothemi shrugged.

“Anything between an hour and a couple of days,” she said.

Laura thought of how Ronon had laid traps for the Wraith.

“Well, let’s make the most of however much time we’ve got,” she said. If it was a couple of days, they’d be fine. If it was an hour, less so. “Let’s see how many of them we can take out when they arrive.”

Lorne nixed that idea, because Lorne was boring that way (also because it would take about as long to evacuate as it would to make traps, making the traps obsolete when they could just abandon planet). But he allowed her to yell at the disorganised mass of civilians to get them in some semblance of order, because he knew she needed some fun. She supposed it was good that Lorne was so sensible; it meant she didn’t have to be. They dialled Atlantis, just to let them know what was going on, and set up a meet on an uninhabited planet with Keller and some nurses to take out the tracker. Carter told them not to risk their lives unnecessarily, which seemed a bit unfair to Laura – when had they ever risked their lives _unnecessarily_? Then she thought of some of Sheppard and McKay’s more famous exploits, and yeah, ok, that was fair.

Torres had the most medical training, so he got to take care of Nothemi, some distance away from the Stargate in a fairly defensible position. Clara and Me weren’t quite sure what was going on, but they were willing to help the evacuation efforts. Clara was pretty good at calming people down and getting them to listen, and Me was pretty good at organizing large groups of people. Laura had a deep appreciation for people who were willing to pitch in even when they didn’t know all the details.

*

It turned out to be more like an hour than days before the Wraith arrived, because life could never be easy, could it? The last stragglers were almost all through the Stargate, having picked random planets to evacuate to, to throw the Wraith off. The few people that were left started running for cover, but were being picked off by the Stunners, one by one. The Wraith were defending the gate, cutting off their only point of escape. At least they didn’t seem to be using their culling beams. As silver linings went, that was a fairly small one.

Clara and Me turned out to be surprisingly adept runners, keeping pace and even outpacing the Atlanteans, who were trained military personnel. Laura wasn’t quite sure when and why Clara had grabbed hold of her hand as they were running, but she certainly wasn’t complaining. They found the cave Nothemi and Torres were holed up in, and had a few seconds to catch their breath. Laura felt thoroughly monkey’s pawed – this was not the kind of excitement she’d been asking for.

Lorne laid out their situation, ending in the grim:

“In essence, we’re trapped, and we have at most minutes before the Wraith find us.”

“Not necessarily,” Clara said. “Follow me.”

And she was off, pulling Laura with her by the hand. Laura went without resistance, with only a quick glance to make sure Lorne and the New Guys were following. So far, she thought Clara had shown both quick thinking and that she wasn’t afraid to act, which made her Laura’s kind of people, and she had no second thoughts about putting her life into the hands of someone she’d met only an hour ago. That was Pegasus for you.

Clara led them to an American diner, a little bit away from where the market had been.

What the hell was that doing there? They rushed through the front part of the diner into the back room, where the kitchen would be if it were an actual diner, which in this case turned out to be some kind of control room, in white with circle-formed cut-outs in the walls. It was also quite a bit bigger than it had looked from the outside.

“What the hell is an Earth diner doing in the middle of the Pegaus galaxy?” Torres asked, saving Laura having to pose that exact question herself.

“It’s not exactly a diner,” Me said.

“It looks kind of like a space ship,” Laura commented.

“That’s because it is,” Clara said with a brilliant smile at Laura. Laura felt her heart speed up and her cheeks grow warm at the sight of it. She put it aside as a thing to think about later.

“That begs the question, why does your space ship look like a diner?” Lorne asked.

“It’s a long story,” Clara said.

“We couldn’t figure out how to make it look like anything else,” Me corrected her.

“OK, not actually that long,” Clara said. She pushed some buttons and pulled some levers, and there was a wheezing sound coming from all around them. Laura guessed it should be making that noise – neither Clara nor Me seemed at all surprised or concerned.

The thing was. The thing was; Clara was pretty much exactly Laura’s type: brunette, super-competent, caring, willing to go with the flow, but not willing to be overridden. You met some people that you’d just connect with, the people that made you sit up and take notice, feel like, yeah, this was my kind of person, this person is on the same level as me. Clara was one of those. Also, she was super pretty, with her cheekbones and her dimples and her dark brown eyes. If she wasn’t careful, Laura could easily see how she could go completely ga-ga over her. Laura was very comfortable with her own bisexuality, but there was that tiny little matter of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It didn’t seem to matter so much in Atlantis, home to people who didn’t fit in on Earth in various ways, and she was fairly certain Lorne had something he Wasn’t Telling, but she didn’t know which way the New Guys would fall. There was cause to tread softly here. Too bad that had never been Laura’s style.

*

As the space ship stopped wheezing, they all made their way out of the diner and into what was clearly the gate room of Atlantis, with its shining windows behind the gate and the stairs with Ancient letters lit up in front of them. Before this, she wouldn’t have said the gate room was big enough to fit a diner, but somehow, it seemed to work out. Like the TARDIS was fitting itself into the space, without actually getting any smaller. Like one of those optical illusions that messed with your perspective. The TARDIS was too big to fit, but it also wasn’t. Both were true at the same time. It made Laura a bit dizzy to think about too much, so she didn’t.

Closer inspection of the room revealed that while it might _seem_ like their gate room, there a few key differences – Laura could read the letters on the steps as if they were English, there were no computers or jerry-rigged Earth-plus-Ancient technology hybrids, and the gate room crew were definitely not the Atlantis expedition. They were dressed in beige tunics, and Laura hated to admit it, but they looked a bit like the Ancients who had been on the _Tria_ and taken over Atlantis that once last year. But the crew of the _Tria_ were dead, like all the Ancients.

Clara was looking around in awe.

“This is wonderful,” she said. “To think that I would have died not seeing this.”

That seemed like an odd thing to say, but sure, Laura could understand not wanting to die before you’d seen this. It really was a wonder to behold, the Atlantis gate room. It just wasn’t Laura’s gate room.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Lorne asked delicately. As team leader, it was his responsibility to deal with uncomfortable diplomatic situations, and he was good at it.

“Why? Is there something wrong?”

One of the people in the gate room approached them.

“Greetings, visitors. I am Frendagris.”

They all did the rounds of introductions again, and Laura hoped he wouldn’t ask what they were doing there or how they’d arrived, given that they might have a few difficulties answering those questions.

“So, I think we may have hit on a tiny little snag somewhere,” Clara said. “Taken a left when we should have taken a right, that sort of thing. Where exactly are we?”

“You are on Atlantis, in the gate room.”

“Brilliant,” she said brightly. “And, uh, _when_ are we?”

“The space ship also travels in time?” Torres burst out incredulously.

“Yeah, I should maybe have mentioned that,” Clara said, a bit sheepishly. “It just didn’t seem relevant.”

So they’d apparently managed to time travel back to the time of the Ancients. That was sure something.

“Cool, let’s explore!” Laura suggested, hoping that Lorne wouldn’t be sensible and boring and suggest they returned to their own time as quickly as they could. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, like hell Laura was going to let that pass her by! _This_ was the kind of excitement she’d been looking for when promoted to Lorne’s team. “This is the kind of thing that happens to Sheppard’s team, not us – we have to make the most of it.”

“Didn’t you get stuck inside McKay’s head once?” Lorne asked wryly.

“Exactly – Sheppard’s team,” Laura countered.

“Can you take us to the right time?” Lorne asked Clara.

“Sure,” she said brightly. “Just maybe not right away. If the TARDIS takes us somewhere or somewhen unexpected, it’s usually because there’s something we should be doing there. Some kind of danger we should be helping out with.”

“Is this thing normal for you, then?” Laura asked.

“Kind of, yeah,” Clara said. Laura wasn’t sure if she was more jealous of her or more attracted to her.

*

Despite their best efforts, they didn’t manage to find any source of danger in Atlantis. Atlantis in the time of Ancients was magnificent – in their own time, they only lived in a small part of it, to conserve power, and because large parts of it was in ruins, and they had no idea what anything had been. A lot of the dangers in Pegasus came not from the Wraith or the plants and animals (although they could be plenty dangerous, too), but from leftover Ancient tech that malfunctioned and wasn’t adapted for human use, so they had to be very careful when exploring.

Here there was no such care needed, and they were given free rein essentially over the entire city, to come and go as they pleased, as honoured guests. They went to explore every nook and cranny, searching for hidden threats, marvelling in the architecture, the people, the technology that just worked effortlessly (Laura didn’t have the ATA gene, but Lorne did, and he said he’d never heard the city sing so vibrantly in their time). If Laura stealthily made sure she and Clara got paired up the most, well, she was sure nobody suspected about her crush, and if they did, there was nothing they could do to prove anything.

“I don’t quite understand it,” Clara said. “The TARDIS has never been wrong before. We should have found _something_ by now.”

“Perhaps it is not you who have the ability to help us, be we who have the ability to help you,” Frendagris suggested. “You say your companion Nothemi is in danger and can be tracked by your foes when you return to your own time, is that correct? However, we have no Wraith here, not yet, and so she would be quite safe.”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“You’d _do_ that?” Laura asked finally, when it became clear nobody else would say it. “Why?”

“You say the entire galaxy almost worships us as their Ancestors in their time, and if Nothemi truly is our Descendant, we have a duty to care for her,” he replied.

Laura and Lorne exchanged a look.

“That’s really not the impression we’ve got from the other Alterans we’ve met. No offense, but you’re much more friendly than your average Alteran,” Laura said.

“Although to be fair,” Lorne interjected, “most of the others met Sheppard’s team – it could be due to the McKay factor. He tends to rub people the wrong way.”

Laura liked Rodney, and she felt she had more of an understanding of how he worked than most, having spent some time inside his head, but she could appreciate that he drove other people up the wall sometimes. It was fair enough for Lorne to say it, he’d saved McKay’s life and had his life saved by McKay often enough she thought he was probably entitled to it, but if either of the New Guys had said that, she would have torn strip of skin from them.

“McKay?” Me asked curiously.

“Someone we work with,” Laura explained.

“Thinks he knows best, doesn’t have much tact,” Bryant filled in.

“Sounds like someone we used to know,” Me said with a significant look at Clara. “Convinced he could do anything, fix anything, talk his way out of anything, until he was faced with a situation he couldn’t fix, and then he went and almost destroyed the universe.”

Clara gave her an extremely dirty look in return. Me seemed unrepentant. Laura wondered what the story behind that was. She wanted to know all the stories Clara had to share.

*

With the mystery of why the TARDIS had brought them to this time solved, there was no real reason for them to linger, but Laura found herself reluctant to go back, and Clara also kept coming up with new things they had to try, places they had to see before they could try to get to Atlantis, _their_ time. Lorne let her, for now, but Laura wasn’t sure how long his patience would last. The fact that it was a time machine, that they could spend as much time as they wanted here without losing any time on the other end, probably helped, but sooner or later he’d feel like he needed to return to do his duty in Atlantis. After all, without him, there was no knowing what kind of trouble Sheppard would get into and not be able to get himself out of.

But so far, they had a reprieve – Laura and Clara could go all over the city, explore, and talk. Clara was full of stories, of travelling all over the galaxy with someone called the Doctor, and then with Me.

She told her about running from Daleks and Cybermen, about saving a solar system with a leaf, about meeting world leaders, and aliens pretending to be world leaders, about splitting her consciousness all over time and space to save the Doctor, about trying to combine a normal life as a teacher with travelling all over space and time, about bank heists gone sideways, about meeting Jane Austen and Queen Elizabeth I and travelling on the Orient Express, about going to the end of the universe, about the Moon tuning out to be an egg on the verge of hatching, about meeting Ashildr in a Viking village, and meeting her again as a highwayman and a noblewoman known as Lady Me, she told Laura about Ice Warriors, Zygons, other Time Lords not as friendly as her Doctor, and countless other monsters.

Laura had her own stories, of being trapped in the body of McKay, of searching for bombs in Atlantis, of the dangers of the flora, fauna, and peoples of the Pegasus galaxy, how you could never be sure that the person you were talking to wasn’t about to sell you to the Wraith or sacrifice you to the Ancestors for safety or something like that, of that time when the Doctor Weir and Colonel Sheppard, the two most senior people of the expedition, inexplicably decided that _they_ were the best people around to be taken over by alien consciousnesses who wanted to try to kill each other one last time before they died, or that time they were seeing visions that turned out to be that the whales were warning them about a solar event that would obliterate all life on the planet. Laura’s stories didn’t seem like much in comparison to Clara’s – a lot of them had been experienced second hand: Laura wasn’t kidding about weird stuff happening to Sheppard’s team more than any other team – but Clara seemed to enjoy them.

They both had the same love of adventure, and the same drive to do something _meaningful_ , the drive that had led Laura into the Marine corps and then to Atlantis, and had led Clara to the Doctor.

Laura used the interactions to flirt as openly as she could, and she couldn’t quite be sure, but she had the feeling that Clara was flirting back.

*

Atlantis was beautiful. It floated on the water, and sitting on a pier on one of the city’s many arms, the view was pretty similar to home. Laura and Clara were on the pier, feet dangling over the edge in the sunlight, just soaking up the atmosphere on one of the final days before they had to leave. Lorne’s patience had finally run out, and he was making noises about going home. Luckily, the Alterans were making noises about hosting a feast in their honour before they’d let them leave.

Laura and Clara sat in silence, just enjoying being near each other. They hadn’t spoken about the future, about what would happen when they went back, if Clara would stay on Atlantis, or if Laura would go with her, or if this was it, a few days of connection, a might-have-been, an unrealised potential.

At least Laura was fairly certain Clara was into her back – her hand was resting invitingly between them, palm up, almost waiting for Laura to grab it. She did so.

Holding Clara’s hand felt slightly weird. It was warm, and soft, but there was something just a touch eerie about it. As if there was something there that shouldn’t be, or like she was missing something that should be there. Laura couldn’t put her finger on what it was, and she didn’t quite know how to ask. Luckily, Clara seemed to notice she’d gone a bit stiff.

“It’s the pulse,” she said, not looking at Laura.

“What?”

“What you’re missing. It’s the pulse. I don’t have one.”

“How is that possible? How are you alive?”

She thought Clara might be expecting her to pull her hand back at this revelation. Laura knew that if she got this wrong, if she said something insensitive, if she made any gesture that could be interpreted as rejecting Clara, that was it. No second chances. So she deliberately kept her hand in Clara’s and relaxed her body.

“I’m not – technically,” Clara said, still not looking at her. “I’m here because I was plucked out of time in the moment before my death, stuck between one heartbeat and my last. That’s why my heart doesn’t beat, and I don’t have a pulse. Time Lord shenanigans.”

Over the week they’d spent in Atlantis, Laura had heard enough about the Time Lords to know that they were essentially giant big dicks.

“I’m going back,” Clara continued. “Eventually. But I had this borrowed TARDIS and thought; why not see a bit more of the universe before the end? I’m on borrowed time in a borrowed TARDIS, but that’s the beauty of a time machine, isn’t it? I don’t have to settle my debts just yet. But I’m going back, eventually. I’m just taking the long way round.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Laura said. “I’m sorry doesn’t really seem to fit the situation, but I am. Sorry.”

“It’s not too bad,” Clara said.

“So, what you’re saying is, you’re both immortal and dead, at the same time?” Laura asked just to make sure she understood what Clara was trying to tell her.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Most of the time, it’s not something I think about.”

“I can’t make up my mind whether that’s really creepy, or really cool,” Laura said, keeping her tone light and jokey.

Finally, _finally_ , Clara turned her head and Looked at Laura. She smiled slightly.

“Neither can I,” she said.

*

The conversation on the pier seemed to have settled something between them – like Clara finally gave herself permission to commit. The evidence came the next day when she invited Laura to travel with her in the TARDIS, promising she could have her back at exactly the time and place they’d left from. Laura wasn’t an idiot – she wasn’t about to let this chance pass her by. She accepted on the spot.

*

Me found her later that day.

“So, I hear you’re going to be travelling with us,” she said, her face unreadable.

“I am. Is there a problem?” Laura asked. If Me was going to get jealous or have any other problems with it, better to find out now, rather than going in blind.

“Not with me,” she said, “but I think Clara might not have given you a fair picture. She’s like the Doctor that way: they tell you the truth, but not all of it. Not the important parts. She gave you that spiel about putting you right back where you came from, right?”

“Yeah,” Laura said cautiously.

“Yeah, see, the Doctor also used to always promise that. But both he and Clara get too caught up in the excitement of it all, they don’t consider reality until it’s too late. They’re convinced they can get out of anything, until they can’t. For every companion he puts back, there’s another one who ends up in the wrong time, or on the wrong planet, or in the wrong dimension, or who gets returned years after they left. Or gets brought back different, or without their memories. Or doesn’t get brought back at all. Clara and I are functionally immortal, but you’re not. You should consider what you’re really saying yes to.”

And with those disconcerting words, she left Laura alone, standing in the soft glow of Atlantis’ corridors, to take in what she’d said.

*

She had to talk to Clara. As soon Clara she saw Laura standing at the door of the diner, looking serious, she sighed.

“Let me guess. Me meddled,” she said.

“You should have told me. About the risks,” Laura replied.

“You’re right,” Clara admitted. “I should have. I just really wanted you to say yes.”

That was nice, and under any circumstances, Laura would be overjoyed to hear it, but.

“It wasn’t fair to let me make that decision without knowing all the facts. Because I can’t, not unless you can absolutely promise to have me back where I belong, completely and wholly intact.”

Clara said nothing. She busied herself with making coffee behind the counter. She didn’t look at Laura.

“It not the dying,” Laura felt herself compelled to explain, “that’s not what worries me. But the disappearing, the risk that the TARDIS could overshoot and bring me back to the wrong time. Or that I might come back different, or not at all. The Marine Corps might think I’ve deserted, if I just vanish without a trace. I don’t want to bring that shame to my parents.”

“I understand. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

*

Both Clara and Laura were a little subdued at the farewell feast hosted that evening, but the rest of the company were merry (especially Nothemi, who would get to live out the rest of the life with the beings she’d previously considered near enough to gods – Laura hoped it wouldn’t be a disappointment), and food and wine flowed freely. It didn’t take long before they were all a bit tipsy.

She probably should keep away from Clara, to not make the inevitable separation more painful, but she didn’t want to. She threw caution to the wind. If all they had was tonight, she wanted to make it count. At least she’d have the memory of what almost was.

*

The next day, they gathered, slightly worse for wear, in the Atlantis gate room to say goodbye to the Alterans and Nothemi.

They all piled into the diner, and Clara and Me set it going, with the same kind of wheezing as before. They all exited, and for a moment Laura didn’t think they’d moved at all. They were still in the Atlantis gate room. But then she heard Colonel Carter’s voice.

“Major Lorne? What’s going on?”

They were back where they belonged. Laura didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed.

“Sure you haven’t changed your mind?” Clara asked hopefully.

“Maybe when I’ve served out my active duty and go on the lists as a reserve officer,” Laura said, feeling a bit sad – she’d made her decision, and she didn’t regret it, but she also did, a little bit. But it was the right decision. “I’m not a deserter.”

“I can respect that,” Clara said. “Only, when will that be?”

Laura gave her a date, about a year in the future, when her time serving on Atlantis would be up, and she’d have to make the decision whether to continue or not.

“See, the beauty of a time machine, is it takes me about three seconds to travel a year.”

She winked at Laura.

“I guess I’ll find you and ask you again when you’re not tied to the U.S. military any longer. Where will you be?”

Laura gave her her parents' address, figuring she'd likely have nowhere else to go - her life as it was now was on Atlantis.

Clara and Me went back into the TARDIS, and the team (and assorted Atlantis staff in the gate room) watched as it wheezed, then started to flicker, and eventually disappeared. Lorne turned around to explain to Colonel Carter what had happened, and why they’d arrived in a diner in the gate room of Atlantis, and not taken the Runner to the third planet, as they’d planned to. Laura didn’t envy him, and was quite glad she wasn’t team leader.

She’d thought she maybe would be, in the future, but now she had a date to look forward to, even if it was about a year out, and a new plan. She knew Clara would be there, just as they’d agreed, and they’d see each other again. Even if Laura did have to take the long way round.

**Author's Note:**

> What exactly Laura and Clara got up to when they were slightly tipsy and threw caution to the wind during the farewell feast, I will leave as an exercise for the reader ;)


End file.
